


Gentle Kindness

by lunrdarling



Category: IASIP, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: CharDee - Freeform, F/M, Fluff, chardee hc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 06:39:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12030279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunrdarling/pseuds/lunrdarling
Summary: There are nights when Charlie shows up at Dee’s door, silver-nosed and red-eyed, looking lost and confused. Dee lets him inside, every time.





	Gentle Kindness

**Author's Note:**

> a headcanon i made for chardee week.. it's also on tumblr if you want to reblog it there:   
> https://jchnmulany.tumblr.com/post/165106807306/chardee-week-day-3-favorite-headcanon-there-are

Dee was sleeping quite peacefully, having had two or three beers before dozing off to sleep. She’d watched three quarters of 27 Dresses before getting too irritated with Katherine Heigl’s character and turning it off. It had been surprisingly easy for her to fall asleep that night. It was unusual, but she wasn’t complaining. 

However, her sleep was interrupted around 1 AM. There was a loud knocking at her door, loud enough to hear in her bedroom and to wake her up. She blinked her eyes open, squinting in the darkness as she looked at the clock. Dee knew almost immediately that it was going to be one of the guys. She was going to kill them for waking her up at this hour. 

After slipping on a pair of pajama shorts and hearing another few knocks, she made her way to the door and opened it. She was right. It was one of the guys. Charlie was standing in front of her, and she got ready to snap at him. What on Earth could be so important that it warranted coming over at 1 AM?

Just as she opened her mouth to speak, his appearance set in. His nose and mouth were silver from huffing spray paint, and his eyes were bloodshot. He smelled strongly of alcohol. There was vomit on the front of his shirt and his hair had what might have been a leaf or two in it. He looked like he’d been through hell tonight. 

“Jesus, Charlie,” She said, looking him up and down, “What the hell do you do?” 

His eyes were a little hazy and he didn’t really look straight at her. He just mumbled something incoherent. 

This wasn’t the first time he’d showed up on her doorstep looking this bad. Sometimes he’d show up with scraped up hands from stumbling and falling in an alleyway. Sometimes he’d show up with a bloody nose from snorting some substance he couldn’t remember the name of in the morning. Sometimes he showed up missing a shoe, or with his shirt torn. 

He had nights where he just went completely off the deep end. He was known to drink and get high and get cross faded. That wasn’t new. But sometimes he took it to a whole different level. There had been a night when she’d asked him why he did this to himself. He said something about wanting to escape. The words pierced Dee’s heart like a knife. She understood what he meant without needing more of an explanation. 

She ushered him inside and shut the door behind him. 

“Come on,” She guided him towards her bedroom and into the bathroom. Sitting him on the lid of the toilet seat, she told him to stay put before leaving to get a clean shirt– left over from one of her one night stands– and a washcloth. 

When she came back, he was leaning against the bathroom counter, trying to keep himself from falling over. She sighed at the sight of him, his eyes half open and his lips chapped and split. 

Dee got the washcloth wet and knelt down in front of him. She gently turned his face to look in her direction and carefully did her best at wiping the silver spray paint off his face. It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t come off completely. She washed the rest of his face and his neck while she was at it, removing the dirt and grime from his skin. When she was done, it wasn’t perfect but he looked better than he had when he’d arrived. 

“Arms up,” She told him. When he complied, she pulled his dirty, vomit-stained shirt up over his head and slipped on the clean one. 

“Dee?” He said. 

She sighed quietly, “Yeah, Charlie?”

“You’re so sweet, Dee,” He told her, “I would die without you,” She knew he was intoxicated and being over dramatic. However, that didn’t stop her cheeks from flushing a deep red. 

“Let’s get you to bed,” She said, not responding to his statements. 

She helped him up of his seat on the toilet and wrapped an arm around him so he wouldn’t fall down. The two of them walked out of the bathroom and into her room. 

When he’d first started showing up like this, she’d insisted he sleep on the couch. Then she’d started feeling guilty, having him sleep on the cramped couch when he was already feeling so shitty. She’d switched so that he slept in her bed and she slept on the couch. That worked for awhile. 

There was one night, however, where Charlie begged her to sleep in bed with him. He made a deeply intoxicated promise that he wouldn’t try anything with her, and that he’d stay on his side of the bed all night. She wanted to be doubtful and hesitant, but there was something in her that told her to trust him. So she’d climbed in bed with him that night and had slept better than she had in a long time. She told herself it was just the exhaustion from taking care of Charlie, but she wasn’t so sure that was true. 

From then on, she let Charlie sleep in bed with her whenever he showed up like this. 

She helped him over to his side of the bed and pulled back the covers so he could climb in. Dee pulled the covers up over him and he snuggled in against the mattress. She knew she’d have to wash her sheets tomorrow, as they’d smell heavily of booze and dirt and spray paint. Sometimes Charlie offered to wash them for her but she wasn’t sure he knew how to use a washing machine properly and she didn’t want to take that chance. 

She flicked off the light and got into bed on the opposite side of him. 

The room fell into silence and they laid there together. Dee wasn’t sure Charlie was even completely aware of where he was at that moment. It was very possible that he had come to her apartment on autopilot. 

She didn’t know if he’d be gone when she woke up in the morning. Sometimes he was, and they’d pretend like the night didn’t happen. However, sometimes he’d still be there when she woke up, passed out and drooling on his pillow. She’d wake him up and give him an apple for breakfast. He’d mumble a gentle, quiet thank you before heading out the door. 

His breathing had become more even and steady. It made Dee feel calm and warm. She pulled the covers up over her a little more. 

Just as she was falling asleep, the silence was broken.

“Love you Dee,” Charlie mumbled softly. He sounded like he was asleep, at least partially so. Dee’s heart beat hard in her chest. Her cheeks flushed red again. She said nothing back for a long time. 

When enough time had passed that she was sure he was sleeping, she got the nerve to speak. 

“I love you too, Charlie,” She bit her lip in the dark and let out a shaky breath. 

Saying it out loud was scary. She only said it because she convinced herself she meant it in a platonic way. It didn’t matter that she’d said it anyway, because she thought that Charlie was asleep. He hadn’t heard her. 

He wasn’t, and he had.


End file.
